


Mind's Eye Like a Hawk

by zombie_socks



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Mentions of Suicide, Past Child Abuse, Post-Avengers, Psych Eval
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-08 10:50:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1938084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombie_socks/pseuds/zombie_socks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Loki was sent back to Asgard, Clint has been having strange nightmares that may have evolved into something more. How could the Tesseract better perfect vision?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mind's Eye Like a Hawk

**Author's Note:**

> Hey Guys,   
> First time posting here.   
> Just a simple one shot that looks at the idea of what if the Tesseract left those who had been affected by it with stronger strengths. (Kind of like the Super Solider Serum)   
> Enjoy!

The early morning light filtered into his room, squeezing through the closed blinds, staining the bed sheets in thin lines of yellow-white. The room was relatively quiet considering its position in the heart of Bed-Stuy. A fan was running, dust accumulating on the old metal blades as it spun lazily in the summer heat, providing more sound than air.   
He tossed in his sleep, rustling the sheets, kicking them off further as the nightmare continued. He started to mumble as the images in his mind plague him; grueling recollections of a god and his mischief, of faces long dead at his hand. An alarm sounded and he awakened with a start, eyes flying open, but body staying still in the aftermath of the sleep terror.   
He let out a breath that he didn’t know he was holding, allowing his head to sink back into the pillow for a moment before he rolled over to silence the alarm. Sitting up, he stretched, attempting to chase away the images that still haunted him.   
He stumbled into the bathroom, bathing his sweaty face in cold water before deciding to simplify the task by stripping off his boxers and stepping into the shower. The cold water felt good on his hot skin, but then it began to recede him into the part of his mind that couldn’t get warm while he was under the god’s control. He quickly adjusted the temperature to near scalding, choking on the steam as it filled the humid apartment.   
He turned off the water and leaned against the shower wall, taking a moment to pull himself together. It’d been months. Months! And still no forgiveness can find its way into his mind.   
He dried off, dressing in a T-shirt and shorts, throwing on his purple chucks that were given to him as a joke from Coulson. He wore them a lot more now that the agent was gone. A small hole was starting to appear where the rubber sole was separating from the dirty canvas near the toe.   
Turning on the TV for background noise, he started his morning workout regiment. But he stopped, halfway through a pull-up, when his keens eyes caught sight of the story on the screen. He watched it intently, wishing with every cell inside him that he could look away, that he could turn from what he saw and what he knew would soon be displayed. But he couldn’t. Instead he stood transfixed by the horror until the anchor switched cameras, switched stories.   
He knew he ate but didn’t remember it.   
He grabbed a cab to base, took the elevator up to the tenth floor, and told the secretary he was there for his appointment. She nodded and after a moment told him he could go in.   
His shrink was waiting for him and he took his usual seat heavily. He was tired of this routine and wanted to shake it. But he couldn’t. And it’d been months.   
The air was thick and un-breathable. He was suffocating in it. The office was familiar but stuffy. The dim sunlight danced in through the closed Venusian blinds and made little dust trails in the air. The particles hovered, suspended in time. They increased the choking feeling of the atmosphere. He felt trapped, pinned down. Sweat seeped into his palms and he rubbed them dry on his pants.   
The darkened room forced his mind to remember the images from early that morning. It had happened again. He could still see everything; still hear the emergency alarm blend with the blaring siren of his alarm clock. He recollected the flash of the image of the plane on the news channel he’d turned to at four A.M. It had been identical.   
“Agent Barton?”   
The doctor had been there for five minutes or more and she’d yet to get the agent to acknowledge her. It was like that with him lately. He seemed to be far more distracted than usual.   
“Agent Barton?” she tried again to no avail. She was worried about him. She’d done psych evaluations on S.H.I.E.L.D. agents for years, Barton himself included, but she’d never seen a case like his. His disturbing childhood alone was enough to give cause to a disorder. But the agent was tough as nails and as stubborn as they come. He was resilient and sarcastic, caustic and full of dry humor. But lately that had been replaced by an impervious distracted and checked-out personality.   
“Clint?” she tried one last time to get his attention.   
His head shot up and his eyes focused. She’d gotten him back.   
“Are you all right?”   
He nodded, though somewhat off-handedly.   
She looked down at her file, reviewing the notes she’d written during their last appointment. “Are you sleeping any better?” she offered as an opening. Even when he wasn’t this closed-off version, Clint had always been reluctant to give her any information. She’d told him that this wasn’t an interrogation, that he didn’t have to withhold information. She’d often wondered if she’d receive more cooperation from him she did treat it as torture – hold a gun up to his head, prick him with needles. She’d offered him that option once, in a cold, dry humor that only his mind would appreciate. He’d given her a smirk and responded with, “Maybe.” But that smirk was missing now and had been replaced with a raw kind of fear that she’d never before seen displayed by him. He was distant, empty. She’d seen him every week since the Battle of New York, and each week he’d sunk deeper.   
“Not really,” he replied to her inquiry about his sleeping habits.   
She made a note of his response. Barton had a disturbingly long history of insomnia. The abusive childhood full of neglect and horrors could be blamed for that. But since New York he’d been even more reluctant to talk about the nightmares that were present almost nightly.   
“Are you still having nightmares?” she coaxed.   
“Yeah.” He rubbed his hands on his knees, his eyes floating around the room. They settled on the stripes of light on the carpet from the blinds.   
“Have they improved any?”   
He shook his head.   
“So they’ve gotten worse?”   
He nodded, still focusing on the carpet.   
“Could you tell me how they’ve worsened? In intensity? Frequency?”   
“They’ve… changed.”   
She tilted her head. “How so?”   
It was like he finally saw her for the first time. A long lost clarity filled his eyes. With force he said, “I’m not crazy, doc.”   
“I’ve never thought you were.”   
“So you believe me?”   
“What do you mean, agent?”   
He shifted forward in his seat. “I wake up with my heart pounding from the nightmare I just had. I get up, turn on the news. It’s 4:30 in the morning. I happen to catch a glance at the breaking story. There’s a picture of a plane crash behind the reporter. And before she can even open her bright red mouth, I know exactly what she’s going to say. She’s going to tell us that a plane, number 478 heading west to Cincinnati from Dulles, went down over western New York state. They said they don’t have confirmed totals yet, but I do. Of the 238 passengers on board, 109 are dead and another 86 are severely injured and/or hospitalized. They know it went down due to electrical failure and are suspecting terrorists. But I can save them the trouble. I know that the senior mechanic, Roger Stinson, had a stroke six months ago. He’s had memory trouble since and checked the boxes of his maintenance list that told him to change out some relays even though he didn’t actually replace them. And by tonight, the body count will be one higher because after hearing about the flight, he knew. He knew he screwed up and he’ll commit suicide.” He sat back in the broad leather chair. “And I know all of that because that was the nightmare I just woke up from. Letters. Numbers. Alarms. I see them all. And then I see ‘em again when I wake up.”   
She stared at him as he collapsed his head into his hands. She wasn’t sure how to respond. Carefully she asked, “Agent Barton, are you trying to tell me you’re psychic?”   
He looked at her, the disconnecting fear back in his eyes. “I don’t know what I am?”


End file.
